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| Lincoln at Peoria | 
| Author: Lewis E. Lehrman
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 10723
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 350
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0811703614
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780811703611
ASIN: 0811703614
Publication Date: July 4, 2008
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Product Description
Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point explains how Lincoln's speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854 was the turning point in the development of his antislavery campaign and his political career and thought. Here, Lincoln detailed his opposition to slaverys extension and his determination to defend America s Founding document from those who denied that the Declaration of Independence applied to black Americans.
Students of Abraham Lincoln know the canon of his major speeches from his Lyceum Speech of 1838 to his final remarks delivered from a White House window, days before he was murdered in 1865. Less well-known are the two extraordinary speeches given at Springfield and Peoria two weeks apart in 1854. They marked Mr. Lincolns reentry into the politics of Illinois and, as he could not know, his preparation for the Presidency in 1861. These Lincoln addresses catapulted him into the debates over slavery which dominated Illinois and national politics for the rest of the decade. Lincoln delivered the substance of these arguments several times certainly in Springfield on October 4, 1854, for which there are only press reports. A longer version came twelve days later in Peoria. To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the Peoria speech of October 16, 1854. It forms the foundation of his politics and principles, in the 1850s and in his Presidency.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, one of the most explosive congressional statutes of American history, repealed the prohibition on slavery in that section of the Louisiana Territory, 36 degree and 30 minute parallel, a restriction on the spread of slavery agreed upon by North and South in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by the famous Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, inaugurated an incendiary chapter in the slavery debates of the early American Republic. In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln launched his antislavery campaign. All of his moral and historical arguments opposed any further extension of slavery in the American republic, founded, as he argued, upon the Declaration of Independence. That all men are created equal, with the inalienable right to liberty, was, for Lincoln, a universal principle that Americans must not ignore.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 A seminal and scholarly reference September 4, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point is an in-depth, historical and critical analysis of Abraham Lincoln's three-hour speech delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. The speech would come to mark a crucial turning point in Lincoln's political career, and therefore the history of America. Chapters give extensive historical context and frame of reference to Lincoln's speech, which firmly established his opposition to the further extension of slavery in the American republic and embodying Lincoln's anti-slavery campaign. A seminal and scholarly reference, Lincoln at Peoria is especially recommended for college library and American history shelves.
Interesting insight into leadership August 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book provides excellent insight into the development of Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary leadership. I enjoyed the little details that helped me understand his charisma. Like most Americans, I had an understanding of the broad strokes of Lincoln's viewpoints, but this detailed analysis of a critically formative period really illustrated it in a powerful way. At points I almost felt as if I was right there. Lehrman clearly brought a powerful curiosity to this project and I'm grateful that he's shared the fruits of his labor with us.
 A disappointment . . . . August 25, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Explaining Lincoln's rise first to state and then national prominence has been a challenge for many historians. Mr. Lehrman finds the answer in Lincoln's renewed political energy after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in early 1854. This Act, surely one of the most unfortunate in U.S. history, revoked the Missouri Compromise and removed Congressional control over the admission of territories as free or slave states, giving it instead (at least in theory) to settlers in the territories themselves. In the aftermath of Kansas-Nebraska, it was no longer possible to believe that by containing it in the South, slavery was placed on a "course toward ultimate extinction." Lincoln was among those who had believed this to be true; he was jolted into action by the prospect that slavery might now spread rather than diminish.
Mr. Lehrman contends that Lincoln's Peoria speech in October, 1854, marks a turning point in Lincoln's emergence as a politician and anti-slavery spokesman, someone previously known more for wit and stump speaking than for powerful political and moral argument. And the Peoria speech was something new for Lincoln. In it, he displayed a new rigor of thought and expression, a new power in argument and analysis, a new firmness of purpose. But Mr. Lehrman claims too much for the Peoria speech. We have the advantage of hindsight: Knowing what Lincoln became, we look for early signs of greatness everywhere. That, I think, is the case here with Mr. Lehrman's narrative. The Peoria speech was a major step in Lincoln's career, yes; but whether it was *the* major step is a completely different matter. The 1858 debates and the Cooper Union speech have better claims to that title.
There is not much analytical weight to Mr. Lehrman's book. Here are two examples. Explicating a statement by Congressman Richard Yates, Mr. Lehrman offers the following parenthetical observation: "The 'North' was used to describe the free states while the 'South' referred to the slave states. This division had historically threatened the 'Union' sealed by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776" (p. 9). Ten pages later, one encounters the following: "Whigs and anti-slavery Know-Nothings rallied against Douglas, a favorite of Irish Catholics in Illinois. When Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Clay spoke in Springfield on July 10, Lincoln stretched out on the grass, whittling his way through the speech. Douglas meanwhile had been put on the defensive, having been required to explain his actions in Congress during the summer" (p. 19). What are these sentences doing together at the start of a paragraph? Unfortunately, there is much more like this throughout the book, the substance of which is simply too thin to be worth the effort of wading through such thickets.
To his credit, Mr. Lehrman has made many contributions to the study of U.S. history through his collections and contributions to archives. Also to his credit, Mr. Lehrman admits he is not a historian. In this he is more accurate than the luminaries who wrote extravagant cover blurbs for his book.
Lincoln at Peoria, The Turning Point July 26, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Many legends, from the factual to the sublime, have been constructed about the rise of Abraham Lincoln from obscure, backwoodsman, through personal and political defeat to the Presidency of the United States at its most crucial time. Lewis Lehrman shares his life's work and passion while illustrating that the true turning point in the political fortunes of Mr. Lincoln was a speech that he gave concerning "America's peculiar institution" of slavery in Peoria, IL on October 16, 1854. In the telling, he shows how this became a remarkable turning point in American and, indeed, world history.
Read more at: http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/lincoln_at_peoria_the_turning_point
It Played in Peoria July 9, 2008
10 out of 18 found this review helpful
The blurbs on the dust jacket overhype the book. Albeit a very important speech in American history, I am not sure this one anti-slavery effort in Peoria by Mr. Lincoln requires a new explanatory book.
Lewis Lehrman is a big time Lincoln buff, but he is not a polished writer of the first rank. His narrative often does not easily flow and he seems to me more interested in dropping in quotes from almost every notable historian of Lincoln and the Civil War period than in providing his own original analysis.
I do hope after wading through a somewhat heavy text readers will study Abraham Lincoln's quite logical and convincing speech, provided at the book's end, which helped propel this extraordinary man to The White House.
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